Looking Backwards Before Looking Forward (Part 1)

2010. A new decade. We made it through the first decade of the 21st century, my sixth decade on this Earth. How’s it been so far?

We’ve made it through the 60’s …The assassination of John F. Kennedy Jr., Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy. We made it through social upheaval in the United States, The Cuban Missile Crisis, The Six Day War between Egypt and Israel, Vietnam. The U.S.A. survived the British Invasion -- The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and The Who and established our own sound, The Motown Sound. Despite everything, we put men on the moon and thirty-two African countries gained independence.

We made it through the 70’s …We endured through Watergate, school bussing, disco and gasoline shortages. Mother Africa endured multiple conflicts including Idi Amin initiating the Ugandan-Tanzanian War, the brutality of the South African police resulting in the Soweto Uprising and the Angolan Civil War. Pakistanis hijacked four airliners in 1970 and then initiated the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, while Palestinians kidnapped and murdered Israeli athletes from the 1972 Olympics in Munich. Augusto Pinochet came to power, much to the detriment of Chile. We saw the end of the Vietnam War, which resulted in the fall of Saigon, about as far from a victory as one could imagine. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge didn’t help matters. Saddam Hussein began his rise to power but the U.S.A. was preoccupied with the Shah of Iran and the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Despite everything, we created personal computer, calculators, microwave ovens and VCRs and the Soviets started flying space stations.

We made it through the 80’s. Ronald Reagan declared “War on Drugs” and Nancy Reagan encouraged us all the “Just Say No”. The meltdown at Chernobyl changed the world’s opinion about nuclear power. AIDS changed the political, moral, social, and medical landscape. Africa remained in turmoil, but all eyes were on Ethiopia and the famine which killed more than one million. The South African Border War ended after thirty years of conflict between Angola, Namibia, and Zambia. Jean-Claude “Baby-Doc” Duvalier was overthrown in Haiti while war raged between Iraq and Iran in the Middle East. We saw the Lebanese War, Falklands Conflict, Polish Uprising, First Intifada in the Gaza Strip, Soviet-Afghan War, Tiananmen Square, and Vietnam-Cambodia conflicts. Assignations and assignation attempts were plentiful norm including the attempt on Ronald Reagan (March 1981), the attempt on Pope John Paul II (May 1981), Anwar Sadat (Egypt, October 1981), Indira Ganhi (India, October 1984), an attempt on Margaret Thatcher (Britain, 1984) and Olof Palme (Sweden, February 1986). Airplanes were regularly blown out of the sky, and the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded, taking David’s cousin Ron McNair and Carnegie Mellon’s xxx. The Berlin Wall came down. We limped out of the 80’s, with the toxins from the Bhopal disaster still in our lungs and the oil from the Exxon Valdez on our backs, but Nintendo was there to save us.

(end of Part 1.)